437: Kitty Shepherd on the nostalgic roots of her colorful slipware
Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast we have an interview with British studio potter Kitty Shepherd. Her slipware vessels feature brightly colored images of pop culture. In our interview we talk about her recent tile work linking vintage lipsticks to iconic music, her duo portraits of Freddy Mercury and Queen Elizabeth, as well as her expat life living and working in Granada, Spain. Visit www.studioslipware.com for more information.
Kitty’s exhibition ‘Word of Mouth’ opens October 19th at Messums London. "
“The centrepiece of the exhibition are two windows into twentieth century culture – 48 individually created tiles that each tell their own story of our collective history and their own unique process of being created. Assembled together, their effect is to overwhelm the eye and bathe it in colour, a sense closer to the experience of a stained-glass window with its panels of story-telling, suffused with the optical experience of the sublime.
At its heart, ‘Word of Mouth’ is a simple story, that of names and colours compiling a social history of our recent times. Every lipstick chosen for illustration throughout the exhibited works is a reflection of the popularity of cosmetics over the last 75 years and in each case, a genuine example of an actual cosmetic product and its name. The research is affecting. Some of these are long discontinued products but many are still current and have retained their eccentric and idiosyncratic naming conventions. In a striking example of how memories really are the markers of time, and how we pass by them, willingly or not, included is the lipstick of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, a celebration at the time of her Jubilee year.”
Today’s episode is brought to you by the following sponsors:
For the past 100 years, AMACO Brent has been creating ceramic supplies for our community ranging from underglazes to electric kilns, and they have no plans of slowing down. www.amaco.com